And All Our Ghosts
by Cap'n Pirate Monkey
Summary: What if EVA followed Snake to Afghanistan...and what if she found him broken "She's not a weak woman, and he is no exception – a decade, she's waited, ten long years before relenting – but there is much to atone for, and who can say how much time she'll take before it's done." Set during the MGS5 era, although I have taken huge liberties with the (presumed) storyline


The room is dark, quiet save for the liquidy hiss of his lungs as they struggle for air. It's as cool as she can make it, although it's near impossible in the heat of an Afghan summer to attain anything like a comfortable temperature. There's a wet cloth draped across his forehead, a ceramic bowl of water on the side table, filmed with ever-present dust. The heavy cloth curtains keep the worst of the sun out, and the room in blueish darkness.

She sits. For a long time, all she does is listen, horrified and fascinated in equal measures by the gurgle of the fluid in his chest, the way it seems to ebb and flow with each breath like the tide. Waiting, in her interminably bleak way, to see if it'll get worse. If, soon enough, there'll be nothing but water, and he'll drown here on dry land. The situation has rendered her powerless, and powerlessness makes her morbid. She can do little but mop his feverish brow and, when he does wake - because he does, frequently, although he never remembers it - remind him for the hundredth time why he's here, and why she's with him.

She understands his confusion. The truth is, EVA shouldn't be here. She shouldn't be within a thousand miles of here; a slip of the tongue on Adam's part, a secret shared in haste and regretted almost as fast. She's glad he told her. Because although she shouldn't be here, she feels as if she's fated to be; as if some greater force than her or Adam or Zero himself (could there _be _a greater force?) has weaved some intricate web of a plan in which she, EVA - spy, lover, mother, betrayer - has a starring role.

After Adam told her about Afghanistan, and about John ("skin and bones and raving like a madman," he'd said, anger evident in the set of his jaw, sorrow in the lines around his eyes) she gathered her things and got on the first plane heading anywhere close. She'd wound up in Iran, bartering in broken Arabic with muhajideen for a ride across the border. (Adam's name - his _business_ identity, his stupid cat-alias - had been worth more than any currency. Not that she'd tell him so.)

She'd followed a trail of rumours and stories, told with furtive glances, as if the one-eyed man himself might appear behind them, a demon summoned by mere mention. The closer she came to him, the more physical the evidence: dustblown hoofprints in the lower reaches of the hills, a streak of sunbaked blood (but no body; hidden, no doubt, in the scrubby underbrush. It always was like Snake to spirit away his dead.) Once, a bullet casing, stark and gleaming against the hardpan - unmistakeably from a revolver, she'd know the damn things from a mile away. And then the trail had dried up, leaving her only with rumours, though these had to be coerced, starting with whispered promises and fluttered eyelashes and ending with a knee to the groin and a gun to the head. A lone woman, Eva thinks, should never travel without protection.

And then she found him.

Accident, rather than design; even after all her inquiries and fact-finding and head-cracking, she still had a thirty-kilometre radius of desert to comb. She had a backpack of dwindling supplies and the chill certainty that Zero must have registered her disappearance by now, and must have an inkling as to why. As night approached, and the temperature began to drop, she sought shelter in an abandoned stone hut, wrapped herself in a thermal foil blanket and waited.

Sometime in the early hours - sky just beginning to turn pink in the east - she woke with a start to the sound of heavy, dragging footsteps in the sand. Instinctively, she reached for her gun - not the snub-nosed pistol she'd been using to extort information, but her Mauser, a relic now but no less effective, no less lethal. She winced inwardly at the crackle of the foil blanket as she shifted position, raising the gun with steady hands, aiming at the dark mouth of the doorway.

The footsteps grew louder. The rhythm was off; someone drunk, or wounded, there wasn't a great deal of difference between the two. Possibly gutshot; the footsteps were solid but it sounded as if balance was the issue. They hadn't taught that in charm school. Years with John and Adam as teachers - two men with senses so acute you might actually believe they were part the animals they named themselves after - had taught her to listen, to taste and smell and feel as well as to look. She could not smell blood, but something like it; a rich, organic stink, like charred skin or infected tissue, strong in the back of her throat.

They were almost upon her - she could hear their ragged breathing, smell the salt of their sweat. The Mauser was a comforting weight in her hands, her talisman against harm; shattering kneecaps was her specialty. This was her hiding place, and she'd be damned if she was giving it up without a fight.

All very noble sentiments which dissolved into sand when she saw the face of her usurper.

He swayed in the doorway, backlit by pale morning sky; his eyepatch was askew. That's what stands out most when she thinks back. The pale margin of untanned skin, usually hidden beneath the black leather. The corner of an empty socket. And that was how she knew something was badly wrong; he would never voluntarily expose that most vulnerable part of himself. Not to anyone. Not even to her.

(Even though, she thinks, she was there when it happened; it was her fault, in part. His modesty on the subject seems almost quaint.)

It took him a good thirty seconds to register the presence of another person, and a further ten seconds to fumble the gun from its holster. If it had been anyone else, he'd have been full of holes and bleeding out into the dust.

But she'd dropped the Mauser, run forward, calling him as quietly as she could: "Snake." Force of habit, and besides, they'd parted on uncertain terms; did she still have the right to call him by name?

He was clearly very sick. His entire body shuddered, as if convulsing; heat rose from him in waves like the hardpan at midday. He was mumbling, half in English, half in Russian; he made sense in neither language. One arm was missing, an ugly prosthetic in its place, although the puckered skin and gnarled scar tissue suggested a wound many years old. When she touched him - tentative, as if he might explode - he looked at her, confused, like he was seeing her for the first time.

And then he collapsed.

So, to now, in that same stone hut, playing nurse with the last of her supplies and the little she'd managed to scrounge, leftovers from the hut's last occupant. He's on a wire-frame bed, resting on paper-thin mattress; his pillow is a burlap sack filled, as best she could, with dry grass. His fever is still high, so no sheets. No clothes, either; she'd stripped him, dampened his hot skin with a wet rag, trying not to look, to feel, to remember. A scrap of fabric covers him from waist to knee. She's not comfortable with the warped intimacy of the scenario and she imagines he'd be grateful for this little concession to modesty.

She sleeps on and off, jolted sharply awake by every shift of his limbs, every lull in his breathing. Every now and again he seems to wake, tracking invisible people around the room with one half-lidded eye, though he never seems to see her. He mumbles in several languages; she's reasonably sure that some of them don't even exist. after the second day of rudimentary care (consisting, mainly, of keeping him cool and drip-feeding him water from a wet cloth - there's not a lot else she can do besides keep trying his radio and hope someone hears it) his breathing seems easier, and she thinks his fever is beginning to abate. He still sees people that aren't there, but it's as good as it's going to get for now.

She fills her waterskins from the well in the courtyard, checking over her shoulder for footprints, or a silhouette on the horizon. She doesn't see a thing. Four times a day she tries the radio. Every frequency is static, the hiss of a dead channel. She persists, because it's a comforting ritual, the one thing she's truly in control of out here. Part of her wishes she knew how to contact Dr. Clark. The other part - the sane part, the part that remembers how stone cold crazy Clark is - would rather die than ask her for help.

The second night is a bad night. His breathing is better, yes, but he shivers uncontrollably; his body glistens with sweat, soaking into the mattress. Even in the darkness EVA can see the livid red of his face, the flush across his nose, fanned out like sunburn. His teeth chatter so loud it seems to fill the room, echo off the walls, until it threatens to drive her mad. He looks so cold, so pitiful, and all she wants to do is hold him, still his thrashing, soothe his crazed mutterings. She knows she shouldn't. He's a furnace, burning so hot she can feel it halfway across the room. The last thing he needs is her body heat. But hours pass, and his fever spikes so high that she knows he's losing; he's fighting so valiantly, so _stubbornly_, but he's losing nonetheless.

Terrified, alone, she curls up on the floor beside the bed, the ground hard and cold beneath her. One arm snakes across the mattress, fingers anchoring in his. The heat of him is obscene. She squeezes hard, waits for a response. Of course, there is nothing.

"I'm sorry, Snake," she says - she won't cry, not yet, he needs her strong, needs her capable until the very end. Her head comes to rest on the sweat-damp mattress, the Mauser on her lap. She is exhausted, and there is nothing more she can do. As she drifts off to sleep, a litany of apologies passes her lips: "Izvini menya, Adam. I'm sorry, Voyevoda. Sorry, David. I'm so sorry..."

She's woken by a low rumble, close by; she jolts into a sitting position, ignoring the protest of her sore muscles. She scrambles for the Mauser, looks instinctively to the open doorway, flooded now with bright morning light. How long did she sleep? Stupid, stupid - it was only a matter of time before someone else came this way and now she's blown it. Too late to escape. She raises the Mauser, rising slowly into a crouch.

A sudden hand on her shoulder makes her leap to her feet. She whips around, Mauser ready, aiming straight into the face of her aggressor...

"It's okay, EVA," Snake says. Then he coughs, a sound that begins deep in his chest and rolls like a thunderstorm. A low rumble...

She sinks back to her knees, the Mauser clattering to the floor. All the tension and fear and anguish of the last couple of days escape from her in one long, shuddering exhalation.

"Jesus, Snake," she says.

He smiles wanly. He still looks like hell - the sickly pallor of his skin and the deep, bruise-blue circles beneath his eyes make him look ten years older. He's still beautiful though; his remaining eye is astonishingly blue in this light, and it's fixed intently on her, taking in the lines of her face, the ruddy pink sunburn, the new streaks of grey in her hair. She feels naked under that gaze, like he can see under her skin and read every single secret contained there.

"Honey and lemon," he says - Dr Clark's go-to remedy for every ailment known to man - and she laughs, in spite of herself. In spite of her exhaustion, of the residual thudding of her terrified heart, of the adrenaline that makes her fingers tremble. She laughs, and he smiles, and in that moment it seems that all that is broken has been fixed, made new; her betrayal, his abandonment. Like they are young lovers again, and nothing matters but this bed, and this outhouse, and the two people in it.

"I thought you were going to die," EVA says.

"I should have," Snake replies. He shifts slowly, testing each limb before he moves it. The stump of his arm is tucked tight against his side; he's still getting used to his loss, it seems. He seems untroubled at finding himself naked. "Many, many times, I should have. I guess Death doesn't want me."

"Oh, well." She tests his forehead. Still warm, but in comparison to the previous night it's just a flush. "His loss."

"Did I call you?" Snake asks. He's lying on his side now, looking around the room, taking in the waterskins, empty sachets of rehydration powder, the damp rags bundled up like shed skin. His radio sits beside EVA on the floor, along with the ugly hook-hand prosthetic. "Shit. I don't remember anything."

"Adam told me he'd found you," EVA says. "I didn't believe him. I wanted to see you for myself."

"I see." He's maddeningly neutral, neither obviously angry nor obviously glad that she's here. Then, still looking at the radio: "It's dangerous for you to be here."

"Lucky for you I never run from danger."

"Why did you come after me?"

She rolls several potential answers around in her head, weighing them against one another for the least pathetic response. But the truth wins out; that blue eye, gazing back at her now, a cool intensity that burns beneath her skin and into her bones, seeking out the very core of her; this is the way he looks at people, like he could lay them bare and tell them every secret, everything they ever thought they could hide. He probably doesn't even know he's doing it. That's the strange thing with Snake (or John, or Jack, or Big Boss - she never knows what best to call him) He seems so unaware of his own power, the gravitational pull he exerts. He must wonder about the loyal followers he's amassed, why the orbits of their lives seem so inextricably linked with his own.

If he's ever abused this power, EVA doesn't know about it.

"I wanted to see you for myself," she says. "You were gone for so long. I'd forgotten what your voice sounded like." _I'd forgotten the way my name sounded from your mouth_, she thinks, but that's a step too far; after everything, to remind him so starkly, to impose her love upon him...

But he smiles, just a little, a twitch of dry lips. "I could read the phone book for you, if you like." A sudden coughing fit overtakes him and he sits up (bones visible in a way they never used to be - what happened to him? Where was he for all those years? Adam's quiet anger makes sense now.) When he's done, he sinks back down, pressing fingers to his forehead like he's suddenly feeling dizzy. "Didn't bring any whisky, did you?"

"Please. If I had any, it'd be gone by now. Watching over the critically ill is a depressing job."

"I owe you, then. For coming out here after me. I might've died if you hadn't."

That hits her where it hurts. "You're getting soft in your old age," she says, a little too quietly. He's never been the most astute individual when it comes to matters of the heart, so she's surprised when he reaches out his hand, places it gently on her shoulder, tracing the curve of her exposed skin with one callused thumb.

"I thought I was crazy, coming to find you like this," she says. "I didn't know what I was going to say to you. I didn't think you'd give me the chance. And when you found me…when you didn't even recognise me…I thought I was a fool."

He says nothing. Just goes on stroking her shoulder, watching her as she talks, more to the ground than to him. What she really wants to say it how sorry she is. For everything since Alaska; all the times she's betrayed him, knowingly, choosing her own selfish desire for motherhood over what was right. She wants to tell him how much she regrets ever listening to Zero and Don and that madwoman Clarke.

She doesn't say any of that.

"But I'm glad," she says, lifting her own hand so her fingertips brush his, barely even a touch at all but enough; enough to know he's real, and he's here, and he's alive. Because of her, at least in part. "I'm glad I did it. Even if you tell me you never want to see me again. I just wanted to know for certain." She pulls her hand away before he can brush it off. "You can't always believe what Adam tells you."

"No," he says, thoughtful. In the ensuing silence, the crackling of his lungs as he breathes is horribly loud. He still needs time, and if he will allow her, she'll give him all the time in the world. She's not a weak woman, and he is no exception – a decade, she's waited, ten long years before relenting – but there is much to atone for, and who can say how much time she'll take before it's done.

"You must hate me," she says. Not quietly; there's not a single tear in her eye, her chin high. She won't hide from her shame. One hand falls unconsciously to her abdomen, tracing the scar there, the folds of skin, tattoos of a motherhood she never deserved. "For what I did."

His grip on her shoulder tightens. And then she feels him pulling her towards him, guiding her gently until she's beside the bed, legs tucked beneath herself, arms pillowed on the threadbare mattress. His hand traces a path up her neck. She shudders involuntarily as his fingers weave into her hair, a warm presence at the base of her skull. Her eyes are level with his own. They are two weary blue-eyed scarecrows, sore with age and exertion, simultaneously drawn together and pushed apart by the complexity of their history.

"I hate_ him_, and I hate _them_," he says. "I never hated you. Never."

Gently, he guides her up onto the bed, awkward with one hand, and she with joint stiff from sleeping on a cold stone floor. But she makes it, and she stretches slowly out beside him, every last crack and pop of her aching bones loud in the quiet. She doesn't dare touch him, or move, or even breathe at first, convinced that she will somehow shatter this spell. When he presses his lips gently to the top of her head, she allows herself to exhale, gently, almost a sigh, but not quite; she's too old and too weary for that kind of fuzzy-headed sentimentality. She allows herself to encroach upon his space, her body poured into the empty space until they both fit, side by side, her contours aligned neatly with his. His nakedness troubles her momentarily, but he doesn't seem to care. She supposes they must both smell at least as bad as they look, and that the bed must be straining under their combined weight, but she can't find it in herself to care about either of those things, because this is how it's meant to be; the two of them and all their ghosts, cocooned in familiar warmth.

He's a patchwork of unfamiliar scars; his ribcage is just visible, a gentle, rolling landscape of hills and valleys. Beneath the scrubby forest of his beard the angles of his face are sharper, harder; he is lupine, dangerous even in this weak, diminished state.

"What did they do to you?" she asks.

But he closes his eye, turns so his chin rests atop her head and all she can hear is the steady thrum of his heart, resolute and stubborn and alive. "Later," he says, his voice low in his throat. "Let everything else wait."

And, for a while, everything does.


End file.
